Pantene quickly shifts gears when online ad is global success

On the evening of Dec. 19, a Pantene commercial ran on U.S. television that skirted all the formal avenues of parent company Procter & Gamble’s typical advertising process. Storyboards weren’t pored over in P&G’s Cincinnati headquarters. Average Americans didn’t provide feedback in consumer-research groups. Media planners didn’t work for months in advance to buy advertising slots.

Instead, on Nov. 7, the one-minute commercial had been released online in the Philippines by the local Pantene unit. It was never intended to reach U.S. viewers. And it was hardly an advertisement about shampoo at all.

Yet after four weeks online, it caught the attention of millions of Americans. So, plans changed. Fast. The video, which shows a male and female executive going through the same workday but experiencing different stereotypes based on their genders, is the latest in a line of viral ad campaigns that tap explicitly into a very raw, emotional sense of both female insecurity and empowerment.

Dove did something similar earlier this year when it released an online video called “Real Beauty Sketches” about women’s damaged self-image. That video has so far had more than 60 million views on YouTube alone.

Most Read Stories

For P&G, the world’s biggest consumer-products maker, the instant global success of a video it never intended to take global forced the North American Pantene team to quickly shift gears.

A week ago, when the ad unexpectedly hit a critical mass of online U.S. viewers, the company started talking about airing the Asian Web video in its original form on American network television. It then crunched its media planning and buying process, which normally takes months, into a mere five days — purchasing a prime-time commercial slot on major short notice.

By Dec. 19, this Web experiment that started in the Philippines aired during ABC’s iconic news retrospective program, “The Year.”

The ad’s unlikely, and quick, path to commercial fame is an example of how global digital trends are upending traditional corporate-brand strategy.

Deb Henretta, the head of P&G Global Beauty, said that feedback from online viewers of the video urged the company to bring it to the U.S. market and that P&G executives felt the need to respond quickly to those calls. Yet the response to from-the-ground-up digital efforts reflects something more than consumers’ increasing power to influence a brand. It also means that employees in a small-business unit halfway across the world can now leapfrog bureaucracy and grab the attention of their company’s top leadership with a clever, small-scale digital experiment.

It also shows the powerful hold that gender issues have on this cultural moment.

The catch in all of these ad campaigns that have gone viral — including Dove’s, Pantene’s and a new “Fat Talk” ad by Special K — is that they don’t make any real mention of their products. Instead, they present an impassioned and emotive critique of gender perceptions.

“For brands to be relevant in today’s world, they need to connect on a cultural level,” Henretta said. “Making an emotional connection is critical.”

Both the Pantene and Dove ads, however, have received some criticism. One of the most frequent points of contention is that the beauty companies come across as hypocritical.

“It raises the question: What’s the motive here?” said Deborah Small, a psychology and marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “It seems a bit disingenuous.”

Such videos may represent a growing advertising emphasis on infiltrating the feminist psyche. Yet they also show that companies are beginning to recognize that their customers want more socially responsible and engaged brands. A study this year by Nielsen found that 50 percent of consumers worldwide would pay more for a product if they thought the company gave back to society in some way. The willingness to pay more was even higher among younger consumers.